A streamlined platform for analyzing tera-scale DDA and DIA mass spectrometry data enables highly sensitive immunopeptidomics

Integrating data-dependent acquisition (DDA) and data-independent acquisition (DIA) approaches can enable highly sensitive mass spectrometry, especially for imunnopeptidomics applications. Here we report a streamlined platform for both DDA and DIA data analysis. The platform integrates deep learning-based solutions of spectral library search, database search, and de novo sequencing under a unified framework, which not only boosts the sensitivity but also accurately controls the specificity of peptide identification. Our platform identifies 5-30% more peptide precursors than other state-of-the-art systems on multiple benchmark datasets. When evaluated on immunopeptidomics datasets, we identify 1.7-4.1 and 1.4-2.2 times more peptides from DDA and DIA data, respectively, than previously reported results. We also discover six T-cell epitopes from SARS-CoV-2 immunopeptidome that might represent potential targets for COVID-19 vaccine development. The platform supports data formats from all major instruments and is implemented with the distributed high-performance computing technology, allowing analysis of tera-scale datasets of thousands of samples for clinical applications. Immunopeptidomics benefits from highly sensitive mass spectrometry (MS). Here, the authors present a computational platform for integrating data-dependent and -independent acquisition MS approaches, and demonstrate its utility for deeper immunopeptidome profiling.